Second Runner-Up

Unbelievable.

My recently-shorn daughter, with just a trace of makeup, a bad self-manicure, a streaky airbrush tan, and a mocking giggle, managed to beat out several pageant veterans with their considerable sequin collections to win second runner-up in her high school beauty pageant. Her 'casual attire' included a clearance rack pair of $3.00 capris and a Goodwill polo shirt. Her dress was a marked-down red Marilyn Monroe 7-Year-Itch knee-length number safety-pinned to ensure proper modesty for a seventeen year old high school student. She was Little Miss Sunshine in a roomful of prom queens. Despite my feelings about beauty competitions, I couldn't help but be proud of her ability to charm.

Her drama teacher bought several of us moms drinks at the bar later. The ex-wife of my ex-husband's divorce lawyer and I danced to some righteous Marshall Tucker covers. The local chiropractor played drums. He had sat right behind us earlier at the pageant, yelling support for his onstage daughter Katie who was lovely in pink sateen and black lace.

The daughter and I discussed the evening around 1 a.m. in the Taco Bell drive-through line while watching sorority girls pile into the king cab ahead of us after peeing all over the Bell's shrubbery. We agreed that, sometimes, you just have to say "f*** it" and go with the south Georgia flow, if only to stave off boredom.

Almost everything about small-town pageantry is wrong-headed - like the Deep South emphasis on football, church, and the Civil War, the valuable little truths are usually buried beneath the great good old boy god named Tradition. But the one beautiful thing which I observed at the pageant was not the Miracle of Strapless Bras, or the Value of Hair Extensions - it was the much-more versatile practice of Grace Under Pressure.

NTD